Tell me the story Of all these things

30 November 2016 until 28 January 2017

For her first solo exhibition at Tenderpixel, Rehana Zaman presents a new video work that spans the two floors of the gallery.

‘Tell me the story Of all these things’ is an accumulation of several narrative threads drawing together intimate conversations between the artist and her two sisters, ominous animated visions of a metamorphosing body, e-learning training on Prevent, and staged, performed gestures. The work takes its title from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s ‘Dictee’, a novel that deploys a variety of texts to examine themes of dislocation and fragmentation. Taking Cha’s work as a departure point, ‘Tell me the story Of all these things’ explores processes of disassembling as constitutive of lived experience.

Working predominantly with moving image and performance, Zaman’s work considers how the interplay of multiple social dynamics on individuals and groups, condition sociality. These narrative based artworks, often deadpan and neurotic, are frequently generated through conversation or collaboration with others. Recent works such as ‘Sharla Shabana Sojourner Selena’, ‘Five’ and ‘Some Women Other Women and all the Bittermen’ have taken up the entanglement of subjective experience and social life whilst riffing on a number of tropes and genres from film and television, from audition tape to soap opera, B Movie to observational documentary.

‘Tell me the story Of all these things’ attends to the particular experiences of British Muslim women, staging a cookery demonstration alongside candid conversations whilst conjuring the amorphous figure of a woman emerging from a barren landscape – a figure placed at the convergence of terror and desire.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Installation view. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things, Part 1 (2016). HD video. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things, Part 2 (2016). HD video. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things, Part 1 (2016). HD video. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things, Part 1 (2016). HD video. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Installation view. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Installation view. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Installation view. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Installation view. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Installation view. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things, Part 3 (2016). HD video. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things, Part 3 (2016). HD video. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things, Part 3 (2016). HD video. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things, Part 3 (2016). HD video. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things, Part 3 (2016). HD video. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Film Still. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Film Still. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Film Still. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Film Still. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Film Still. Tenderpixel.

Rehana Zaman, Tell me the story Of all these things (2016). Film Still. Tenderpixel.

Tenderpixel and Tenderbooks, 2016. View from Cecil Court.

Photography by Original&thecopy

Rehana Zaman (b 1982, Heckmondwike UK) is based in London. She holds a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London and completed her MFA in Fine Art at the same place in 2011.

She was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award in 2017; a British Council research grant with Museo de Art Carrillo Gil, Mexico City in 2015 and a Gasworks International Fellowship to Beirut in 2013. Zaman was a LUX Associate Artist in 2012/2013. She is a lecturer on the BA Fine Art programme at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include solo exhibition at Grand Union, Birmingham, UK (upcoming in 2019); the Kochi Muziris Biennale, IN (upcoming in 2018); 14th Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (upcoming in 2018); Speaking Nearby, CCA Glasgow (2018); Tell me the story Of all these things, Tenderpixel, London (2016/2017); Material Art Fair IV with Syndicate, Mexico City MX (2017); Giantess, StudioRCA, London UK (2016); Some Women, Other Women and all the Bittermen, commissioned by The Tetley, Leeds UK (2014); I, I, I, I and I, Art Rotterdam Projections NL with Tenderpixel (2014); What an Artist Dies in Me / Exit the Emperor Nero, Outpost, Norwich UK (2013) and I, I, I, I and I, commissioned by Studio Voltaire, London UK (2013).

She is frequently invited to devise and deliver workshops, talks and events for groups and organisations such as UP Projects with Flat Time House, J4DW, Studio Voltaire’s The Syllabus, RCA, UCL, Birkbeck, London, Funen Academy, Denmark and Royal Institute of Art, Sweden.